Palmer wants to refund carbon tax payers

Billionaire miner Clive Palmer has declared he gives ‘‘zero’’ weight to Tony Abbott’s claim to a mandate, warning the Prime Minister he cannot take for granted the Palmer United Party’s support for the repeal of the carbon tax.

Interviewed on Channel Ten on Sunday, Mr Palmer said his party’s policy was to not only abolish the carbon tax but to refund those who had paid the tax since its introduction in July last year.

‘‘Because it’s a bad tax, it’s always been a bad tax. And I don’t know whether that’s Liberal Party policy. I don’t think it is,’’ he said.

‘‘There’s an ambiguity, because we think it should be repealed from the date of introduction and the Liberal Party policy seems to be only to repeal it and not worry about the injustices that happened over the last year or two. So we’d want to get clarification on that, we’d want to get some advice, talk to people and have a friendly discussion with Mr Abbott.’’

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Asked whether he would respect Mr Abbott’s mandate, Mr Palmer responded: ‘‘I don’t know what a mandate is. I know what the result is, and the Australian people have voted to give us the balance of power.’’

Mr Palmer finished just seven votes ahead of Liberal National Party candidate Ted O’Brien in the seat of Fairfax on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, where a full recount is now underway.

Palmer United Party Senators were elected in Tasmania, Queensland and Western Australia, although the Western Australian result is also subject to a recount.

Mr Palmer last week announced an alliance between his party and Victorian Senator-elect Ricky Muir of the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party and demanded his voting bloc be provided with more resources to scrutinise legislation.

Mr Palmer on Sunday played down suggestions Mr Muir could join his party.

With five parliamentarians, his party would be given parliamentary party status, entitling it to more taxpayer-funded staff and resources.

But Mr Palmer said he had given no thought to inviting Mr Muir to join his ranks.‘‘We hadn’t thought about that,’’ he said.

Asked whether change was needed to the system of MP entitlements following a number of MPs repaying inappropriate claims, Mr Palmer suggested Australia adopt the system which operates in the United States Senate, in which Senators are given a set budget to spend as they wish.

‘‘That saves the taxpayer a lot of money because it eliminates all the finance gurus, all the investigations by the AFP, holding up the courts with cases like the Slipper case and things like that. They’re all trivial things... we don’t want our media running around about trivia. We want them to concentrate on the serious issues.’’